society as suggestion

8/6/2019 Society as Suggestion

1/38

Mind as Multiplicity,

Society as Suggestion

Richard Ostrofsky

(September, 2008)

The world may be viewed as a myriad of To Whom It May Concern messages.

Norbert Weiner

But such pre-set signs are, of course, only a part of the communicative

equipment of the dumb. Harpo Marx does not need them. And dogs and horses,

hawks and elephants, also make themselves understood to those who are

normally with them, whether members of their own species or human beings.And the human beings return the favour. Making oneself understood is an

immensely wider field than talking. It supplies the context, and the only

possible context, within which human talking makes sense.

Beast and Man, Mary Midgley, p 234

Freudian psychology expanded the concept of mind inwards to include the

whole communication system within the body the autonomic, the habitual, and

the vast range of unconscious processes. What I am saying expands mindoutwards. And both these changes reduce the scope of the conscious self. A

certain humility becomes appropriate, tempered by the dignity or joy of being

part of something much bigger. A part if you will of God.

Gregory Bateson1

Meaning is created for me by vast networks of background contexts about which

I consciously know very little. I do not fashion this meaning; this meaning

fashions me. I am part of a vast background of cultural signs, and in many cases

I have no clue as to where it all came from.

Ken Wilber, The Marriage of Sense and Soul(1998)

One would say that the child is playing with the ball, were it not equally true

that the ball is playing with the child. Eugen Herrigel,Zen and the Art of Archery (??)

0. Introduction: The World as Suggestion

A suggestion: For a thought experiment, lets put aside the familiar idea of

ourselves as rational agents who make intelligently self-interested choicesin accord with pre-existing beliefs and desires. Instead, lets think of

ourselves as driven by suggestions (much like this one) to feel, think and

act in suggested ways usually, in alternative, competing ways that wego along with or turn down in the course of managing our lives. Naturally,you will ask why you should go along with this suggestion, and I will

shortly offer reasons for doing so.

First though, a few words about the concept of suggestion itself. Theword is used here with its usual double meaning: First, suggestions make

1 Form, Substance and Difference, in Steps to an Ecology of Mind, p 467-468


2/38

proposals; they raise, point out and advocate a certain possibility. But also,

like hypnotic suggestions, they also casts a little spell. The secondary

meaning is important, because many of the suggestions put to us are notprocessed consciously, and may not be so easy to reject: Apart from the

objective cost in refusing a suggestion from your boss or your spouse,

there is usually some emotional hook or 'spin' that makes them easier to goalong with than to turn down. Typically, a suggestion not only requests

your consideration, but also creates a little field of perception and emotion

that must be overcome (if only by a stronger suggestion) before it can berejected. The art of loading suggestions in this way was the classical study

known as rhetoric indispensable for anyone aspiring to a career in

politics or law, or any position of leadership.

The well-framed suggestion not only proposes something, butpropagandizes and lobbies for it as I am doing here in writing this piece.

As everyone is doing all the time, with every utterance they make.

suggestion vs information

We often think of communication as a transmission of information. For

engineers, interested only in thesize of the messages being sent butindifferent to theircontent, the mathematical definition in terms of bits and

bytes is useful and appropriate. But for the theory of human relationships

it will not do at all. Typically, human (and animal) communication is not areduction of uncertainty, but a directing of attention to some thing or

possibility combined with an endorsement of some kind a kind of

pointing, fraught with an emotional tone. Politicians communicating withtheir constituents, managers communicating with their workers, teachers

communicating with their students, parents communicating with their

children, friends just chatting over a cup of coffee, are not reducing one

another's uncertainties at least, not until some definite alphabet ofpossibilities is pre-agreed upon. Corresepondingly for biologists,

psychologists and social scientists, suggestion rather than information is

the proper unit for the inter-communicating systems that they wish tostudy. The communication exchanged between a newborn and its mother

is highly suggestive, and therefore meaningful, for both of them. They

exchange suggestions and "make themselves understood" long before theycan exchange anything that could be parsed or quantified as information.

As Mary Midgley points out, its this innate suggestive communication

that makes informative communication possible.I will not further belabor this point,2but take it for granted here that all

communication can be seen as a presentation or exchange of suggestions

in the above sense. Rather, I use the present essay to focus on some

implications of this idea first for the concept ofmind, and then for thetheory of society and government.

2 Having already done so in two previous books: Sharing Realities and The

ecoDarwinian Paradigm.


3/38


4/38

living by suggestion

All such theory must begin from some assumptions about human nature for example, that men and women are sinful creatures fallen away from

God's Divine Plan (permost traditional religious thinking), or that human

lives are properly defined by their alloted social roles (as in Confucianthought), or that we are game-theoretically rational, self-interested beingswith an innate capacity "to truck and barter," as in Adam Smith's treatise

on The Wealth of Nations. In the past, social and political theories have

invariably been stunted by over-simple assumptions like these. We haveyet to see a comprehensive social theory grounded in what is known today

about human biology and 'human nature.' Since Darwin's time, we have

learned to see ourselves not as embodied spirits but as human animals asa primate species, with some peculiar specialties. Crucially, these include

an aptitude for making, using, and teaching the use of tools, and for social

living through customs, technologies and organizations grounded in

symbolic communication. It is high time that our political and religiousthinking caught up with this anthropological self-understanding. We can

expect little peace in the world until it does so.

The suggestion offered here is that we should form the habit of seeingourselves most basically as human suggestion processing systems (or

suggers for short), whose autonomy consists in receiving, comparing,

evaluating and finally acting upon suggestions that we receive from andthrough our bodies, from our environments and from other people. As with

other species, the suggestions we work with fall into ranges and categories

that our nervous systems evolved to notice and deal with. To a uniquedegree, we are specialized to deal with suggestions about relationships

with other people and with abstract suggestions about workable materials

and their possible uses and products. We live by constructing elaborate

patterns of behavior from repertoires known as cultures that arecomprised mostly of previously received and internalized suggestions

from other persons, though instinct and temperament also play a role.

Selecting, combining and varying on such repertoires, we are highlyversatile 'production systems' only loosely analogous to stored-program

computers or cybernetic guidance systems.

As anthropologists have described, such cultural repertoires, known tovary quite radically from one society and group to another, largely replace

the detailed, specific "instincts" that most other creatures live by. The

human animal has instincts too, but these seem rather vague and malleableby comparison with those of other creatures propensities for kinds of

experience and learning, rather than for specific behaviors. Primarily,

human animals are guided or driven (I want to avoid the word 'controlled')

not by instinct but by suggestions from our respective cultures suggestions that typically compete with one another, even within a single

'culture,' and certainly around the world and over time.


5/38

As we all know, the evolution of these cultures is complex and subtle.

We make our cultures by living them, of course, but not in a fully

conscious or deliberate way. Though many great men and women havemade identifiable contributions to culture, what is transmitted finally is an

often garbled, misunderstood or over-simplified resultant, of the messages

they bequeathed. In fact, culture can be compared to a kind of ecology an ecology of mind, as in the title chosen by Gregory Bateson for his

collection of scientific papers and essays.3 On this great metaphor, the

ethnogapher's problem is not just to document the key features of such anecology, but to explain how that system 'hangs together' how it regulates

(i.e.governs) itself, and how it evolves slowly over time by analogy with

the more familiar bio-ecologies of the natural world.

To such explanation, the idea of communication as suggestion, and ofourselves as suggestion processors, makes useful contribution. My

purpose in this paper is to indicate how Bateson's concept of an 'ecology

of mind' can be unpacked and studied as a flux of suggestions along the

lines to be discussed.structure of this paper

Its first section takes up what might be called the human guidance system how the human organism is driven, guided, influenced (again, not

strictly speaking controlled) in its daily living, and through all the days of

its life. Obviously, we have a great deal of autonomy, but are notcompletely free agents. The problem here is to understand and account for

the direction that we receive and rely on without deprecating our

autonomy in responding to that direction. Thus it seems clear that neitherof the familiar stories is satisfactory: We are not meat robots, driven by

computer programs sequences of executable instructions, like the

software that runs my laptop. Nor are we are free spirits, "made in the

image of God," who are not "always already" shaped and encumbered byfamily background and social environment. Most accurately, with the

knowledge and language now available, we should see ourselves as

organic systems generating individual streams of consciousness andbehavior in response to the current suggestions we receive, and those we

received and "took on board" in the past.

Where the first section of this paper develops this concept ofsuggestive guidance, the second reviews the salient features of human

biology that make us the clever, social, emotion-driven suggestion

processors that we are. The third and fourth sections build on thisperspective to discuss culture, society and government, as the inescapable

context of our individual lives. This is done first from the bottom-up, from

the perspective of culture, and then top-down from that of government. In

both these sections, the focus is onsociety as a system, a kind of entity something more than just a lot of people doing things with and to each

other. As with the human individual, our problem here is to see the social

3 Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Gregory Bateson


6/38

system on its own terms, accounting both for the necessities and the

randomness of what we call history the self-organizing patterns of

human life.This social system surely has suggestive influence in our lives. As a

structure of suggestive guidance it is much more than just the sum of what

people do. Yet at the same time, there is no such thingas society apartfrom its people and their doings. The problem is to get this conundrum

right; and to do so, we must review the twin concepts of (bottom-up)

culture and (top-down) governance the latter building to an apex inspecific institutions of formal government. We want to understand first

culture and then government in this double way: both asproducts of social

interaction, and assources of the suggestions guiding our interaction.

Finally we come to the great question: What is mind, anyhow?Conceiving ourselves as living beings endowed with mind, what are we?

As Bateson points out in the second epigraph to this paper, we have

learned to understand this concept not as a personal essence or possession,

but as an emergent feature first, of a communication system within thebody, and second, of the whole social and cosmic communication system

of which we are a part. Both these ideas, Bateson says, "reduce the scopeof the conscious self," but here, inserting Carl Jung's distinction, we can

correct him a little to argue that both changes reduce the conscious ego,

but potentially enlarge the consciousself.

Why just potentially? Because this revised idea of mind as anembeddedly emergent feature of biological and social processes is too

complex to grasp without some understanding of the science behind it, and

because this science directly challenges (though it does not in all respectscontradict) a few thousand years of religious and philosophical thinking. It

needs a willing suspension of disbelief to put aside traditional ways of

thinking for an open-minded consideration of the novel 'ecoDarwinian'paradigm of mind, an effort that relatively few people have time or

inclination to make. Still, attitudes change slowly even without much

conscious reflection, and the sciences of mind will continue to advance as they should. Religious thought (where real thought exists in this area,

which tends instead to make a virtue of uncriticalfaith) will need to come

to terms with the results of this science, as it eventually came to terms

with Galileo, with an Earth displaced from the center of the universe, andwith the brute fact that Scripture cannot be understood literally without

willful ignorance and intellectual dishonesty. But these new ideas of mind

cut much closer to the bone of human self-understanding than theheliocentric theory ever did, and we can expect them to be causing cultural

indigestion for many years to come.

More on all these points below.

1. Suggestive Guidance

In the usual way of thinking, we conduct our lives by intending and doing

things making plans and carrying them out. We understand ourselves as


7/38

original intenders, original sources of volition, who form our desires and

intensions "out of the blue," so to speak, by exercising our "free will." On

this view, I can explain my actions (though only some of them, and up to apoint) as instrumental to my desires. I put the kettle on the stove because I

want a cup of coffee. I sit staring at my laptop because I want to finish this

paper. If you ask why I want these things, I might be able to answer youwith reference to some other desire of mine. But sooner or later, I am

stymied. Such explanations of 'folk psychology' come to an end, or circle

round upon themselves in a closed loop. For the sciences of mind andsociety this is frustrating. If I can't explain why I want the things I want, I

have not explained much at all.

On the model proposed here, there is a chance of cutting deeper: We

can see ourselves as guided or directed (I continue to avoid the word'controlled') by the flux of suggestion that we receive from our own bodies

and from the world around us, every moment of our lives. To these

suggestions we respond autonomously indeed, but from pre-existing

behavioral repertoires and in these responses, we conduct our affairs andmanage our lives. We can see ourselves not as original sources of desire

and intention; but rather assuggers suggestion processors whointerpret, compare and weigh the suggestions we are exposed to, and

construct responses to suit. There remain many old and new questions

about this mental processing, and only some of these will be answerable.

But it will at least be possible to treat desires and intentions as outcomesof the suggestion ecology, not as inexplicble manifestations of 'free will.'

the suggestions around us

Putting aside suggestions from the natural world and from the physiology

of our own bodies, the suggestions from 'culture' are what mostly concern

us here. And we see at once that these are of two kinds: Some are encoded

in various artifacts: my coffee mug, the chair I'm sitting in, and my laptopare good examples. From long experience, each suggests what I can do

with it the possibilities that it 'affords.'4To a baby they suggest quite

different possibilities: Mugs can be great to bang on laptops, if grandpaisn't looking. Other suggestions remain intangible as patterns of thought

and behavior, propagated and maintained as personal and relational habits

of people who belong to a certain culture as my grand daughter, havinglearned to drink from a cup, is gradually starting to belong. In practice,

most features of culture combine both these aspects. The things we use

suggest their possibilities to us as we have formed the habit of using them.Think about your relationship with your car, for example. Or with your

cell phone. Or with anything else.

So in a sense, we are all walking around 'hypnotized' (and self-

hypnotized) by the suggestions from all sides those we encounter in ourhomes and workplaces and streets, and those that we've completely

internalized, that we re-create and modify, as best we can, when we find

4 In J.J. Gibson's language. Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordancehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance


8/38

ourselves in a new environment.

memes and re-suggestive structures

For the sources of these suggestions that guide our behavior, the word

'meme'has been proposed by analogy with the name 'gene' for the little

packets of information that guide our bodies' development. While there isno doubt that culture self-organizes, and that a kind of natural-selection isone of the drivers of its doing so, there are deep problems with this

biological analogy that I will not go into here. 5 For the sources of these

suggestions, I prefer to speak of're-suggestive structures.'Though thatphrase is clumsier than 'meme,'it is far less misleading: The use of coffe

mugs and laptops can be called 'scripts' or 'memes,' and I may do so

myself; but the physical objects the cups and laptops themselves cannot be called 'memes' though their suggestive influence is obvious.

Admittedly, my insistence on the phrase 're-suggestive structure is a bit

pedantic. Through whatever term, we put at point the re-combinant chunks

of culture that propagate and influence people with relative autonomyfrom other such chunks. Amongst many other possibilities, I can have

eggs over easy for breakfast, or I can have them scrambled or sunny-side

up. I can order them with ham or bacon or sausage. The entries on a menuare re-suggestive structures that suggest these and other possibilities as I

read it. I evaluate all these suggestions somehow, and re-combine them to

place my order.Meme theory makes the interesting point that such cultural chunks

compete for space in people's brains and daily regimens, but it does not

explain where the memes reside from whence and how their suggestionsto specific individuals on specific occasions are generated. By contrast, the

notions ofsuggestion and re-suggestive structure make it quite clear that

their sources are either physical objects or neural patterns usually both of

these, fitting together. The physical coffee mug beside my left elbow is apowerful source of suggestions that prevail and shape my behavior several

times a day. I know where it came from and could trace how it was made.

I can describe what it has in common with other mugs. I can account forthe relative consistency of the suggestions it presents to you or me, and for

its relative interchngeability with other coffee mugs. I can say flatly that is

a presenter of suggestions to hold and drink from it in a certain way, withpowerfully associated suggestions of certain common bereages: coffee,

tea, hot chocolate and so forth. For all these reasons, the concept of a 're-suggestive structure'seems much more accurate than 'meme' much moredescriptive of what is happening.

evaluation, choice and synthesis

But there may also be suggestions that I have had enough coffee for onemorning, and that I am already starting to buzz. The question is, how do

5 See Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, (1976)


9/38

all these suggestions get evaluated in a human brain and synthesized as a

continuing stream of conscious thought, intention and behavior?

That is not a question I will attempt to answer here. Nor could anyoneanswer it fully as yet, though it is remarkable how much we have learned.

By now, we have a pretty fair understanding of the connection between

brain and mindin general terms. Certainly, functionalists can now tell amuch more detailed and coherent story about the brain-mind system than

Cartesian dualists ever could. Not in full detail yet but without hand-

waving, we can account for the full complexity of human thought andactivity without appeal to any supernatural 'ghost in the machine.' We have

no need of that hypothesis.

2. The Peculiar Primate

In North American culture at large, the basic animality of the human

species is still a bitterly resisted idea. Among scientists, however, there isvirtual consensus on our evolution as one primate species among several

near relatives, and on the further conclusion that our remarkable human

cognitive abilities are functions of our distinctively human brains andnervous systems. The 'minds' that we experience, and feel ourselves to be

are not less wonderful (in fact, much more so) for being subtle by-

products of physics, chemistry and complex organization with nothingsupernatural about them. The claim is notthat mind has been reduced to

mindless physical matter; it is that physical matter can be shown to

organize itself into systems so complex as to be aware of themselves as

minds. We will take for granted here that the functionalists are basicallycorrect: If ever the workings of the human organism and human societies

are fully understood, there will be nothing left to explain about human

consciousness and cognition.As the argument for that position is lengthy and readily available

elsewhere, I will not attempt to summarize it here, as doing so would only

distract from my purpose.6 But I do need to say a few words about the roleof suggestion in human biology. My first task in this essay is to review

what is now understood about our minds and their capabilities, showing

how it would translate into suggestion language.

A good place to begin is with the traditional understanding ofourselves as generalists, free of instincts, endowed with free will and able

to make whatever we like of ourselves:``We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, nor endowment

properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever giftsyou may, with premeditation, select, these same you may have and possess

through your own judgement and decision. The nature of all other creatures isdefined and restricted within laws which We have laid down; you, by contrast,

impeded by no such restrictions, may, by your own free will, to whose custody

6 For such attempts I can suggest Daniel Dennett's Consciousness Explained, Antonio

Damasio's The Feeling of What Happens, and/or my own book, The ecoDarwinian

Paradigm.


10/38

We have assigned you, trace for yourself the lineaments of your own nature. I

have placed you at the very center of the world, so that from that vantage point

you may with greater ease glance round about you on all that the world contains.

We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor

immortal, in order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being,fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend

to the lower, brutish forms of life; you will be able, through your own decision,to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine.7''

Without altogether rejecting this vision of human self-creation and

responsibility, from a different perspective it is readily seen that our will isshaped and constrained by our biology, life history and immediate

circumstances. We pay a high biological price, generation after generation,

for our human brains, and all that they make possible: symbolic thoughtand communication, the very rapid personal evolution that we call

'learning,' and our capability to make, use, and teach the use and making

of increasingly complex tools. Given what is known today, we mustcorrect Pico's story in significant ways:

First, the human animal was notgiven anything by anyone. Throughprocesses of evolution processes of genetic, ecological and cultural self-

organization that we understand pretty well by now the speciesstruggled up from African forests and savannahs to its present precarious

dominion. Second, the freedom that Pico lauds is not as great as we might

wish, bringing its own limitations and forms of bondage. Certainly, it isnot the absolute freedom of a God, a pure spirit, but only the relative

freedom (autonomy would be the more accurate word) of a creature that

must learn, in its own skin, how to evaluate and respond to the suggestionsthat its senses deliver. Third, that autonomy is enhanced, but also

constrained and compelled, by 'culture,' by the requirements of social

living, and (from the top down) by some form ofgovernment. Thosevague, troublesome notions of culture and government will be explored inthe next sections, but the human creature that contrives and is guided by a

culture and government must be considered first. The key point is that

human anatomy is rather more specialized than may appear at first sight. Itturns out that surviving as a generalist (fairly good at many things,

outstandingly good at none of them) is itself a specialty, at least as

demanding as any other.

the hominid complex

The family of hominids (or 'great apes,' as it is sometimes called) counts

the orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees and us humans amongst its living

species, but includes a number of extinct species as well. Though we lacksufficient evidence to trace the lines of divergence, interbreeding and

extinction with certainty, it's clear that all these creatures are near relatives

of ours. Orangutans, whose line diverged from our own the furthest back around 12 million years ago (mya), it is thought have been known to use

7 From Pico dela Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man. See

www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mirandola/
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mirandola/http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mirandola/http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Mirandola/


11/38

leaves to make rain hats and leak-proof roofs over their sleeping nests.

Adult orangutans have been observed teaching youngsters how to make

tools and find food. All the extant great ape species use tools to someextent and individuals from each have been taught the rudiments of sign

language. All have opposable thumbs and the precision grip made possible

thereby. (The other great apes have them on their feet also.) All are highlyintelligent and highly social creatures, though to varying degrees and in

somewhat different ways. We can speak then about a 'hominid complex' of

traits that primate evolution had already made available, which then wererecombined and further exagerated by evolution to produce our own,

human kind, three other extant species, and a much larger number of

extinct types along the way.

Though we cannot know what the future holds, we can say that to-dateat least, us humans represent the furthest development of this hominid

complex as if evolution had been aiming at us all along, although we

know for sure that that is not how evolution works. However, it is simply a

fact that orangutans, gorillas and chimps have been reduced to threatenedpopulations in a few scattered regions and to specimens in human zoos

and laboratories, while our own kind overruns the planet.

the Baldwin effect

Although evolution is blind and intrinsically aimless, the living creatures

subject to it have purposes of their own. In their attempts to survive andreproduce, the creatures themselves give their future evolution a kind of

purpose. More than one hundred years ago, the psychologist James Mark

Baldwin pointed out the mechanism through which this happens:Through the 'Baldwin effect,' as it is now called, living creatures, in

effect, select the selection pressures that operate upon them as they

respond to consistent suggestions from their environments. Exploiting

whatever plasticitity of physiology or behavior that they possess to meetlife's challenges, they encounter selection criteria that correspond to the

strategy they are pursuing.

For example, given a generic browsing creature that eats both grass orleaves, and local conditions which make leaf eating the more rewarding of

these alternatives, natural selection will cause individual animals with

even the slightest prefererence for leaf eating to fare better and leave moreoffspring than those with a preference for grass. As they do so, whatever

genes either exagerate the preference for leaves, or make the creature more

efficient at obtaining, eating or digesting them will tend to become moreprevalent in the populations, as genes with the opposite effect become less

so. In due course, if those conditions persist, a new species of specialized

leaf-eaters perhaps with longer necks to reach the higher, more tender

leaves may evolve on this corner of the savannah, while morespecialized grass-eaters may evolve elsewhere, and while the generalists

may either remain or be driven to extinction by their more specialized kin.

Baldwin's idea is still controversial, and biologists are understandablynervous about a concept that comes so close to vindicating Jean-Baptiste


12/38

Lamarck, who argued (a half century before the publication of Darwin's

theory) that giraffe's necks grew longer as they stretched them to get at

leaves, and that this stretching got passed along to their offspring. Thatdoes not happen; all that does get handed down are the enduring

opportunities and problems of leaf-eating. Many instances of this Baldwin

effect have been found even in our own species. A notable recentexample is the gradual elimination of lactose intolerance, as human

populations got used to keeping live stock and drinking their animals'

milk.8

In Baldwin's sense, then, a certain purposefulness can be discerned in

the blind processes of genetic shuffling and natural selection. Though in

themselves these pursue no intentions at all, and have no awareness of the

directions they are taking, they are guided nonetheless by suggestions notonly from the environment, but from the creatures who try to cope with it

and who either prosper or die off as the environment evaluates their

suggestions.

Seen in this light, the hominid complex was its own self-reinforcingoutcome, and our humanity is a condition that our distant ancesors

imposed upon themselves and their progeny. As primates became moreversatile, curious, manipulative, imitative and social, they put these same

traits at a premium. Males competed in them; females chose mates who

were better at them; infants who inherited them had better chances of

surviving long enough to grow up and pass them on. Though the details ofour ancestry are not and may never be completely known for want of

sufficient evidence, it is quite clear that we acquired exagerated versions

of these traits through the same Baldwinian feedback that gave the giraffeits exageratedly long neck.

the domesticated ape

If we had to charaterize the hominid complex with a single word, the word'domestication' might be a good choice.9 With the possible exception of

our loss of body hair, all the distinctive human traits erect posture,

skilful hands, tool use, symbolic thought and intricate social living bycreatures who remain distinctly individual probably evolvedpari passu,

side by side and in equal steps, with our increasingly domesticated life-

style. As we became more human, we lost the taste and aptitude for livingin the wild. As we abandoned that wildness, we placed selection pressures

on ourselves to become more human. Thus, if we understand the word

'domesticated' as simply the opposite of 'wild,' then we can think ofourselves as a domesticated species. More even than our dogs and cattle,

we are used to living among other humans, making ourselves serviceable

to them and being cared for (however well or poorly) in return. The first

species that Man domesticated was humanity itself.

8 Seehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Lactase_biology.

9 See Peter J. Wilson's bookThe Domestication of the Human Species.(1989)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Lactase_biologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Lactase_biologyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerance#Lactase_biology


13/38

We can surmise that this human self-domestication included (and

placed a premium on) three key traits:

1) the habit and taste for life in a controlled environment;2) the cognitive skills and temperament for group participation; and

3) the temperament for acceptance and submission to suggestive

guidance from dominant others.Neoteny, defined as the retention into adulthood of juvenile

characteristics, may have played a role in the evolution of these traits. It

has been argued, for example by Stephen Jay Gould, that homo sapiens isa neotenous species of chimpanzee. Various human traits notably bone

structure, cuteness, submissive suckinesss, and openness to learning

seem to point in that direction as does the long period of infancy andchildhood, needed to accomodate the passage of a large brain through the

birth canal, and the extensive cultural learning it then requires.

Be this as it may, it is clear enough that all the hominids were alreadygroping toward a primitive domestication for millions of years before the

first true humans appeared. Our close primate relatives live in smallgroups, use simple tools, and prepare comfortable places to sleep. Theirsocial life is quite similar to our own in many respects. By comparison, the

groups that humans form can be enormous; our tools have become

incredibly sophisticated; and we do much more than sleep in our homes

and factories and office buildings. But one can see, and can even trace insome detail, how we got to our present condition how the human pattern

evolved. We can even be pretty sure that the changes are still going on,

that human evolution remains incomplete. There is a joke amonganthropologists that we ourselves are the missing link between those

anthropoid apes and the true human beings.

If we take the manufacture (as opposed to mere use) of stone tools asthe marker, it is clear that by 2 or 2.5 mya, the hominid complex was

getting off the ground. Hominids had already mastered the use of fire and

may have begun to cook their food as early as 1.9 mya. The domesticated

ape was becoming downright civilized!Since then, of course, our self-domestication has made tremendous

strides. Even our wars have been conducted in an increasingly organized

and technologically sophisticated way not at all the way animals fight.To this point at least, the hominid complex has had tremendous success,

admittedly with one branch triumphing completely at the expense of its

less fortunate relatives. A single hominid species now dominates the planet

to an extent that is clearly dangerous for its own survival.

* * * * *

So much for human biology. The logical next step for this essay on mind

and society would be to show how 'human nature,' the hominid complex asevolved to-date and represented currently in ourselves, expresses itself

collectively on the world's stage. We would like to understand how the


14/38

cognitive and then behavioral proclivities of individual men and women

play out in public events and in the flow of history: in our families and

tribes and nations, our ways of making a living, our wars and our religionsand, beyond all this, in the continuing evolution of the hominid complex

itself. But none of this can be attempted here, for two reasons: For one

thing, we don't yet know enough about ourselves. Though much has beenlearned, much still remains unknown. And we have no way of knowing

how all that's being learned about human biology and mind will be

understood and deployed for human purposes in the long run, and what itsresults will be. The knowledge we're acquiring may prove liberating, or

toxic and is probably both, depending on its uptake by individual people.

For another thing, even if I knew or thought I knew where this

story is going, the telling of it would not be possible here. The story of thehominid complex is much larger than that of humanity itself. How does

'human nature' play out in our history? The idea of doing this question

justice in a single section of one essay is plainly ridiculous. So it must be

left to the reader's imagination. All I will do here is make very briefmention of some recent research on human values and value judgments.

These, it is turning out, are not entirely artifacts of culture and, therefore,not at our complete discretion. On the contrary, human value judgments

including our moral judgments appear to have a significant component

from human biology.

the biology of values

The tastes and values of any species are products of its evolution part of

its sensory equipment, one might say. The world that a creature's sensesreport to it is full of threats and opportunities, and those most critical to its

survival are usually perceived as such, directly and with no need for

secondary judgments. To a dung beetle, a cow pattie is a banquet. To a

vervet monkey, a fast-moving shadow is death.We humans are no exception, though our own hard-wired value system

is more malleable and less fool-proof than most. We crave sweets too

much. We enjoy and readily become addicted to substances that can kill usprematurely. By and large however, and pace Hume, our values are facts

or rather begin as facts first of human biology and then of culture which

is itself an expression and elaboration of our biology.Perthe Baldwineffect, we can say that our values are suggested to us, first by the

evolutionary history of our gene-line and then by facts of circumstance

and life-style. We make choices about our lifestyles. All creatures do so toat least a minimal extent, and the values informing such choices tend to

become part of its physiology. For humans, the range of choice is

enormous though again, much larger for some than for others.

Thus, it is by no means just a happy coincidence that fruit tastes sweetto us while fire feels painful, that sex is pleasurable and that babies look

cute, that we value peace and justice while seeking to raise our status

and/or gain a little advantage. All these traits evolved because, on balance,they contributed to the survival and reproductive success of the individuals


15/38

who shared them. Each functions, in effect like an independent module,

driven by promptings (that is to say, by suggestions) from its own centers

in the brain. These will often conflict with one another. There is noautomatic coherence amongst them.

Certain key values have been directly liked to specific structures in the

brain. Other values are believed to have a biological basis, though thestructure(s) involved have not been found as yet. Though research in these

areas is far from complete, results to-date show pretty clearly that values

are not so much conceived and rationally judged as directly perceived, inthe first instance. Stimulations of specific neural centers are experienced

as pleasant, painful, frightening, and so forth. Situations that lead to firing

in one or more of these areas are associated with their frequent

consequences and experienced and classified accordingly.The basic distinction between pleasure and pain what does and does

not feel good must be the oldest and most primitive feature of the human

evaluation system. More subtle are the so-called affects, described as

physiological programs that appear to run whenever triggered by asufficient stimulus, and that underpin our feelings and emotions.

A crucial distinction is being drawn here: The idea is that emotion is acognitive and culturally patterned phenomenon, while affectis a

physiological one a reflex, like the eye-blink or knee jerk that can be

elicited by any sufficient stimulus. The latter seem to happen

automatically, and can be elicited in infants. They lack as yet the cognitivedimension of emotion, and may or may not be consciously perceived; but

they co-assemble readily with one another and with learned associations as

well. In doing so, they become what we call emotions culturallypatterned and individually configured responses to fraught situations of

many kinds.

Nine distinct affects are recognized today, identified with doublenames likeEnjoyment/Joy andInterest/Excitementto distinguish them

from the emotions to which they give rise.Enjoyment/Joy is signalled to

others with a smiling face, while Interest/Excitement is signalled with theattitude called 'paying attention': eyebrows down, eyes tracking, close

listening. These are the two positive affects. They feel pleasurable,

presumably to reward us for getting into the situation that triggers them.

Then there is the neutral affect, Surprise/Startle, signalled by raisedeyebrows and eyes widened and blinking, which makes a sudden

interruption so that attention can be paid to a new situation. The other six

affects are negative not pleasurable at all:Distress/Anguish, Anger/Rage,Fear/Terror,Disgust,Dissmelland Shame/Humiliation. These too are

signalled to others with characteristic behaviors and serve their various

purposes. With one exception, I will not further discuss them here.10

Shame/humiliation plays a central role in human sociability, and was

10 I have done so elsewhere in the essay called Shame and Personality, included in this

collection. See also Shame and Pride: Affect, Sex and the Birth of the Self,

Nathanson, (1994) from which that essay stems.


16/38

probably the most recent to evolve. Marked by a drooping posture with

head and eyes averted, it serves a purpose of renunciation, allowing the

organism to (literally) turn away from something otherwise desired anddesirable. That is simple enough and, like the other affects, can be

observed even in infants. But the emotions connected with it are

exceedingly complex and highly patterned by culture, ranging from mildsocial embarrassment to a mortal shame that cannot be assuaged except by

suicide. It's scarcely an exagerration to say thatshame/humiliation is part

of what makes us human, as the story of Adam and Eve suggests: It is thisaffect that lets us shape our own activities and even our motivations

according to the wishes and attitudes of others. Without it, the intricate

dance of social life would scarcely be possible.

Quite recently, it has been shown that more abstract values too mayhave a biological basis.11 The so-called Moral Foundations Theory

proposes five "innate and universally available psychological systems" as

the basis for ethical intuitions that seem all but universal, however many

exceptions and cultural elaborations are found. The first, called harm/care,underlies what we call empathy and the virtues of kindness, gentleness,

and nurturance. The second,fairness/reciprocity, gives rise to an innatevaluing of justice, personal rights, and autonomy. These two are liberal

and individualistic values, keenly felt by almost everyone. The remaining

three ingroup loyalty, authority/respectandpurity/sanctity are more

controversial. They represent group values, typically enforced by groupson deviant individuals and, for that reason, are inimical to values of

autonomy and personal freedom. The suggestions stemming from these

five value systems are ineluctably in conflict with one another; and theyhelp to rationalize, even when they do not directly motivate, our warfare

and our milder political quarrels. Due to our differences of temperament

and upbringing, they vary greatly in the weights that people give them andin our evaluations of them one against another. Like shame, those last

three 'conservative' value systems make for a great deal of unhappiness

and cause a lot of trouble. But, also like shame, social life would beimpossible without them. Probably a gentle compromise amongst these

five moral 'instincts' is the best we can hope for.

Finally, some recent work by Bjorn Grinde and Daniel Gilbert on "the

pursuit of happiness" is worth a mention here.12 Grinde has argued that theemotion of happiness, like other human emotions has a biological basis in

the affect system. Gilbert cites experiments that he and others have done to

argue that humans are poor judges of what will make us happy or unhappy prone to errors of judgment in predictable ways. If we think of happiness

11 Introductions to Haidt's work can be found athttp://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html and

http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.php

12 See Bjorn Grinde's bookDarwinian Happiness , (2002) and Stumbling on

Happiness, (2007) by Daniel Gilbert. See also this book's website at

http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/index.html .
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.htmlhttp://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.phphttp://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/index.htmlhttp://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/index.htmlhttp://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.htmlhttp://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/mft/index.phphttp://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/index.html


17/38

as a sort of generic, unattainable goal like the carrot permanently dangled

before the nose of a cart horse, then we can see why its frantic pursuit

must be the root cause of human suffering, just as the Buddha said.The extent to which such universally observed values are mandated in

the biology of our species remains controversial. As Daniel Dennett puts

it, hunters everywhere throw their spears pointy end first, presumablywithout a gene commanding that they do so. Nor do the human tendencies

in these directions make us any less responsible for our personal

judgments of right and wrong. We still have to live as best we canaccording to our lights, and must endure the consequences of our personal

and collective mistakes. Still, their ubiquity makes a case that something

other than 'culture' is at work. These are either evolved characteristics of

the species or practical necessities of social living either way, traits thatculture itself must respect.

summing up

Where does all this science leave us in our quest for self-understanding?

That is the question I began with, as I embarked (about 12 years ago) on

the program of reading behind this essay.One interim finding is that our ancient idea of ourselves as pure and

rational spirits trapped in needy, mortal bodies is no more than a poetic

manner of speaking and a misleading one. Coherent and rational agencyis no innate faculty of the soul, but a learned skill (to whatever extent it

has been learned) and, at best, no more than a first approximation to what

is really going on. We are not reasoning creatures whose Reason issometimes distorted by emotion. We are creatures with affect-driven

emotions who can sometimes reason fairly accurately when the conditions

are right. We are inherently conflicted beings, fashioning our responses on

the fly to a great variety of competing suggestions. We are habitual seekersof the satisfactions we have learned to seek, and avoiders of situations that

we have learned are unpleasant even when the unpleasant things would

be of benefit to us in the long run, and when the satisfactions have mortalconsequences. Not especially rational in our small life choices and still

less so in our big ones, we must understand ourselves as addicts of a sort

adapted and habituated to whatever.Another ancient idea is now confirmed by science: We are not truly

individual beings. Or we should recognize, at least that our individuality is

only partial and permanently problematical. I once heard a Zen teacher Albert Low, in Montreal describe two games that he claimed all living

creatures, and certainly all human ones, must play: Look At Me! isthe

game of self-assertion, with whatever we take to be self-interest as its

corollary. It's a pursuit of glory in some form: as power or wealth orknowledge, or outstanding achievement, or all of the above. Who Am I? is

a very different game about secure identity, attachment and belonging. It's

the search for a secure social location, with well-defined coordinates.The permanent tension between these games is at the core of our


18/38

nature as social animals, and has been expressed in many different ways:

Kant wrote of our "unsocial sociability." Rabbi Hillel asked, "If I am not

for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, what am I?"Gurdjiev spoke of learning to feed "both the wolf and the sheep entrusted

to one's care." However formulated, the finding is that we are not solitary

animals like the big cats, nor herd animals like cows and sheep. We are noteven pack animals like wolves. Least of all are we automatically and

unreservedly social creatures like the bees and ants. The hominid complex

has shaped us as ineluctably social, yet permanently individual beings:"One chimpanzee is not a chimpanzee," Robert Yerkes once said. Still less

is a single human fully human. And yet, on the bottom line, we live and

die alone.

3. Culture

As anthropologists first used this term, 'culture' referrerd to the tools andideas artifacts and 'mentifacts' that a people hold in common, live by,

and pass along to their children. For the study of all those tribes that white

men encountered, which had remained relatively isolated from one anotherand from the mainstream of history, this idea of culture was natural and

useful. The problem with it today is that very few peoples have remained

isolated and static in this way. More and more, anthropologists findthemselves studying groups which have by now adapted in some fashion

to the ways of European or other intruding peoples, and also to much more

extensive contact with one another. Traditional cultures are scarcely pure

these days. They have blended and been modified by one another into arich, syncretic stew showing the bits and pieces of what they were

originally, but no longer with their original flavors. At the same time, the

attention of anthropologists has shifted to include the folkways ofEuropean and other colonizers peoples whose cultures were very far

from static and homogeneous as compared with the self-contained cultures

first studied. With these changes, the notion of 'culture' became vague andcontroversial, leaving its students with troublesome questions of

methodology: What exactly is the 'culture' of a complex, rapidly changing

society like our own? Where and how should we study and analyze it?

In this essay, our idea is to think of culture as a flux of influentialsuggestions and, behind that flux, as a co-evolving system ofre-suggestive structures, the reliable sources of suggestive influence that

guide our activities along fairly stable and predictable lines without

literally controlling us.

material culture stigmergy

It's clear enough that our artifacts our buildings and furniture, streets androads, machines and tools, books and CDs, and whatnot else give

definite shape to our lives, a different shape than prevails elsewhere where

the artifacts are different. The artifacts guide us to their use, by suggesting

that we can do easily what would otherwise be more difficult. And they


19/38

they guide us through their use by suggesting just how we should use

them, sometimes just by the way they fit our bodies and sometimes with

detailed instruction manuals and help facilities. It's clear as well that allthese artifacts get designed and made in the complex interplay between

designers, marketing people and consumers. And many other types, of

course. To think of all these artifacts generically as 're-suggestivestructures' is apt not only because they purvey suggestions to us, but

because they originate as physical embodiments incarnations, so to

speak of the flux of suggestions that created these particular artifacts inthe first place. In fact, everything we make and use serves a double

function: It is used for whatever we use it for mostly for the purpose for

which it was specifically designed. At the same time, it serves as a re-

transmitter of the values, purposes and knowledge that went into itscreation in the first place. The tool is not only an artifact of the culture that

it embodies. It propagates that culture as it is manufactured, sold and used.

Thus, an ancient pot or jug not only held grains and liquids but broadcast

the idea of holding grains and liquids of carrying them and storing them,in other words. Today a car not only takes people from place to place but

propagates the idea that such transportation is cheap and easy as it was,before the roads became congested and the price of gas went through the

roof. A gun not only kills things, but propagates an idea that a squeeze of

the trigger, a mere crook of the index finger, gives a power over lives.

Along these lines, the concepts of suggestion and re-suggestivestructure make the material dimension of culture readily intelligible.

Things are not just more or less useful things; they are receptacles and

sources of ideas. Whatever their specific use, they are media ofcommunication as well.

There is a useful word, 'stigmergy', for this type of communication via

to-whom-it-may-concern messages inscribed on the environment. Theterm was coined by entomologists studying the behavior of ants and

termites and other social insects, from the Greek wordsstigma, meaning

'sign,' and ergos meaning 'work.' Literally then, stigmergic communicationcauses and guides work through markings on the environment. It is the

mechanism that allows an ant hill to be much more intelligently adaptive

in its collective behavior than any individual ant. There is no master ant in

the colony who takes reports from his minions, and issues orders tellingthem what to do. Instead, the ants direct each other by leaving chemical

trails as they move different kinds of trail in different situations. The

individual ants are basically just simple organic robots that blindly followthose chemical trails. But the trails get much stronger when numerous ants

are going to the same place (for example, where food can be found and

lugged back to the ant hill), and these trails evaporate over time when thatfood source is exhausted, so that the ants who follow them find nothing to

bring back. In this way, the ant hill as an entity can take account of and

respond to changes in its environment that are wholly beyond the ken of

any single ant. The complex building activities of termite colonies are


20/38

based on this same trick. Our own brains seem to work in quite a similar

way, construing a rich world for the whole organism that means nothing at

all to its individual neurons.One level up, human societies also make rich use of stigmergic

communication through material suggestions left on, or lying around in,

the environment. Societies are configured, in large part, by their ownartifacts and other physical traces in much the same way that ant hills and

termite colonies are configured by those pheromone trails. You can see

this principle at work by taking a walk in the park, noticing all theunplanned paths where grass has been worn away by people who've taken

shorter routes than the park's designers laid out for them. Today our roads

and superhighways follow routes once taken by Indians through their

forests. There is a story13 that the standard gauge for railroad tracks inEngland today matches the wheels of Roman chariots, because the horse-

drawn carts that followed would move most easily if their wheels could

stay in the ruts left by the chariot wheels on the muddy, unpaved roads.

The Web page cited recounts this tale in amusing detail, but says it couldfind no evidence for it. True or not, however, entering the search words

'railroad tracks,' 'gauge' and 'Roman' on Google, you can find numerousreferences to the story. The search results themselves, in the order that

they appear, are a fine example of human stigmergy in action!

ideational culture

Stigmergy is a powerful method of communication, and a very powerful

idea. Human cultures use it a lot. But not all re-suggestive structures are

written onto the environment at least not in any obvious way. Thelanguages we speak, the music we listen to, the values and ideas that we

uphold and fight about are also sources of suggestive influence. Before the

invention of various recording media, such patterns existed only in

peoples' heads, in a form that will be understood in physical terms onlywhen we can trace in detail how ideas are represented as patterns of neural

firing. Until then, and even afterwards for sheer convenience, we must use

a mental language for this dimension of culture: concepts, ideas, sharedvalues and so forth. Many books have been written about 'capitalism,' but

there is no place (except everywhere) in the modern world where you

could find capitalism as such. As a key feature of our culture, it is not anartifact, but an idea about the augmentation of private property that we

have in common, whether we like this idea or not.

Like the stigmergic culture of material artifacts and inscribed tracks,such ideational culture is not the work of anyone in particular, and no

persons entirely representative of it can be found. Rather, it emerges

through processes of tacit convergence in the interactions of people who

live and work together or in close proximity. How is this possible? Whatforces pull our concepts, values and behaviors together into more or less

coherent patterns, as against the centrifugal forces pulling these features

13 Seehttp://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/railwidth.htm. .
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/railwidth.htmhttp://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/railwidth.htmhttp://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/railwidth.htmhttp://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/railwidth.htm


21/38


22/38

selfish 'memes'

One crucial insight about cultures is that they are not cut out of wholecloth (as the structuralists once insisted). On the contrary, they can be

broken out into relatively independent 'chunks' that propagate, thrive and

dwindle more or less like biological species. Though life on Earth is

ultimately a vast unity in its genetic code and fundamental chemistry, ithas configured itself into innumerable distinct 'species' roughly,

populations of organisms sufficiently similar to be capable of breeding and

reproducing their kind. Quite similarly, though society too is a vast unity,it seems to be comprised of organizations and people driven by

autonomously propagating chunks of culture. To emphasize their analogy

with the genes, Christopher Dawkins gave the name 'memes' to thesechunks, and that usage has caught on. Partly because the analogy with

genes is imperfect, and to emphasize their role as sources of suggestion, I

prefer to think of these chunks as 're-suggestive structures.' By whatevername, however, these structures resemble genes in two interesting

respects:First, like the genetic patterns, they compete for limited resources

energy and bio-mass in the case of genes, human attention and

commitment for the memes (or re-suggestive structures) of culture.

Chunks of culture compete as shapers of human time, energy, and

allegiance: I can pick up this book or that one. I can pick up a book or turnon the television. I can attend this church, or that one, or none at all. In

general, as individuals in a society we can choose more or less freely from

the cultural repertoires available to us, and we can combine and re-combine the possibilities more or less at will. We can do anything, but not

everything and certainly not everything all at once.

The second analogy with the genes is that these chunks of culture areessentially 'selfish' in the sense that Dawkins pointed out: Their

propagation is 'blind' to the welfare of the societies and individualsfor

whose allegiance they compete. On the whole, like genes, they may thrive

better if they further our human interests help us to live, and gain themeans of living, to mate and to raise our children. But they need not help

us, and often don't. Some very successful cultural patterns war, racism

and ideological univeralism for three examples do us much more harmthan good, destroying lives or blighting them on an enormous scale.

Though the analogy with genes can be misleading, Dawkins' basic

point is undoubtedly correct. Culture need not be a coherent structure.

More precisely, such coherence as it often acquires is not a given, butderives rather from the ecological balance toward which chunks of culture

evolve as they influence real people in real situations, and compete with

one another to do so. The apparent seamlessness of simple cultures is aconsequence of their having had a long time to evolve in a fairly stable

natural environment, given only limited contact with similarly evolving

neighbors. The culture of a complex society, interlinked by extensive traderelations, intermarriage and warfare, can have no such luxury. Studied by


23/38


24/38

what to do?

Specific types of relationship are defined by their characteristicscripts

their characteristic structures of re-suggestion. But relationships as suchhave some interesting formal properties which cannot help but be reflected

in societies and their evolved cultures.

To begin with, relationships of any duration must be almostre-entrant.That is to say, in their daily, weekly, monthly and yearly cycles, they must

not erode their own premises and pre-conditions. Each cycle must end in

such a way that the next one can begin as expected. They must re-createthemselves each time around. This means, in particular, that they must

suggest their own recreation preferably, but not necessarily, by keeping

their participants happy and producung good results. The relationship of

enemies may remain quite stable so long as both survive, though theirquarrel makes neither happy.

Societies too must be approximately re-entrant for as long as they

endure, though their component relationships are shifting all the time, with

old ones collapsing and new ones being formed. But re-entrance is only arelative property, not an absolute one. Always, there is a small increment

or small depletion which makes each new cycle commence under slightlydifferent circumstances than the one before. Capital is accumulated or

capital is drawn down. In the new fiscal year, the firm, the nation, and the

whole world are either slightly richer or slightly poorer than in their last

tour around the sun. Many of the small changes from one cycle to the nextwill cancel each other out, but some accumulate until, sooner or later, the

system reaches a tipping point and topples into some new configuration

with a new conception of its own normal state, and new re-suggestivestructures in support.

A second feature of relationships as such is that they are basically of

two kinds, though mixed and alternating types are also possible. As puretypes, however, relationships are either symmetrical or complementary:

Either the parties want and do the same things with and to one another, or

they want and do different things that somehow mesh together.Whether symmetrical or complementary, the parties to relationship

must adjust their actions to one another according to the suggestions they

receive. Relationships become possible to the extent that people are

attentive and responsive to each other's suggestions. If this responsivenessfalters, relationship ends.

With approval and good reason, we quote Lord Acton's dictum that

"Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely." Nonetheless,despite our dreams of universal equality, symmetrical relationships tend to

be unstable. Most relationships tend to become complementary over time

even if they do not start out that way. There will be suggestions tospecialize and share resulting the gains even where the balance of power

and distribution of benefits are equal. But such equality cannot last

because any tiny advatage tends to accumulates over time, due to the so-


25/38

called 'Power Law' or 'Matthew Principle14' that those who have get more.

It is in consequence of this Power Law that popular web sites, showing

highest ranking in the search engines, attract more hits and become morepopular still. Similarly, popular high school dates become still more

attractive because it brings prestige to be in their company; rich people get

richer because wealth attracts opportunities to make money; poor peopleget poorer because their poverty renders them helpless and easy to screw.

A third formal property is that relationships tend to become

recombinant and hierachical. To remain fairly stable under changingconditions, their parts, or human members, must be able to combine with

each other in alternative ways, and must not be irreplaceable in the

relationships thus formed. Thus subatomic particles re-combine in various

ways to form protons, neutrons and electrons which combine to formatoms of the various chemical elements. These, in turn, re-combine to

form the (literally) millions of kinds of molecule. In almost empty space,

molecules collect into stars and solar systems and then into clusters and

galaxies. At every scale, we find wholes comprised of interchangeableparts, which themselve form parts of still larger wholes.15

society as a structure of relationships

Thus, in human societies everywhere we find pecking orders, chains of

command and pyramidal organizations with incuments whose status is

marked by tremendous differences in pay and privilege between those atthe bottom of the organization chart and those at the top. A complex

society has many such organizations, and there is probably no help for

this. From the organizational perspective, these hierarchies endure (whilethey do) because they are stable re-entrant and self re-creating and

because they are effective for divvying up responsibilities and work loads

and getting a job done.

Accordingly, in both the Old World and the New in Egypt,Mesopotamia, China, pre-Columbian Mexico, and other places ancient

empires built massive pyramids of stone at enormous costs in labor and

political will. Why did they do it? To the rulers who commanded them andthe laborers who built them, what did they mean?

There's no way we can know for sure, and the specific functions of

these structures certainly varied. Their sheer size must certainly have beena political statement: "See what a mighty ruler I was! See what I caused

my people to undertake and accomplish!" But these were not their only

great building projects, and the pyramid builders typically built otherenvelope-pushing structures as well walls, temples, canals, aqueducts,

and whatever else. So why pyramids also?

I don't know of any text that tells us. The only way to get at the

pyramids' significance for their builders is to notice what they still suggest

14 Matthew 13:12

15 Also known as the 'Holon Principle.' See The Ghost in the Machine, Arthur Koetler,

(1967) and discussion athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holon_(philosophy).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holon_(philosophyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holon_(philosophyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holon_(philosophy


26/38

to us. The pyramid remains a powerful symbol of social organization in

the abstract: On one hand, the pyramidal shape reminds of social

inequality of the chief executive's supreme command of wealth andpower, and the proportionately lesser dignities of those in the successive

below him. But on the other, it makes a statement of social stability and

solidarity, asserting that every worker like every stone has his place in thegrand scheme of things, and makes his contribution to the whole.

* * * * *

The upshot is that societies can be conceived as self-organizing systems ofinterpersonal relationships guided by re-suggestive structures that are both

physical and cognitive in nature; and we have seen that social

relationships tend to be (or soon become) re-entrant, re-combinant andhierarchical in character. They tend to be complementary because

symmetric relationships are unstable, fraught with competition and

conflict. They tend to be recombinant because the permutations andcombinations for complentary relationship are endless, with some of these

possibilities proving to be stable. They tend to be hierarchical chiefly

because of the power law or Matthew principle that more accrues to those

who already have much, and because suggestions are not evaluated onequal terms each coming weighted with the status or 'prestige' of the one

who makes it.

People are not born ready for, and comfortable in such relativelystatic, hierarchical relationships, but can become accustomed to them, can

learn to accept them as "the natural state of affairs" as indeed, for the

reasons just reviewed, they tend to be the natural state. Given widespreadhabituation to unequal, complementary relationships between individuals

with well-understood duties and responsibilities we have the novel

possibility of complex organizations with top-down governance andorderly replacement of their chiefs. In short, we have the possibility of

stable governing institutions perhaps the central feature of what we call

'civilization.'

4. Government

From one perspective, government can be seen as a kind of official

protection racket on the scale of a whole society. Paying the impost buysyou protection from rival mafias both internal and external, who are sure

to come at you with their own 'offers' if your current 'protector' can't keepthem out. At its most basic, that is all a government need be to its subjects,and its suggestive structure is very simple: "Pay up, or else . . .!" Some

governments around today are scarcely more than that.

In due course, however, government usually becomes more symbioticwith its society organizing its subjects' work-lives (and even the rest of

their lives to some extent) and providing them with diverse services and

spectacles in return for its demands. To understand the nature and role of


27/38

government, we must explore the motivation for all its operations that arenotdirectly aimed at the extraction of revenue. For any particular

government, we'd want to know why it provides the particular mix ofservice and spectacle that it does, beyond the pure protection game. That is

only one question among many that we'd ask about a government, but one

that cuts to the core of its political process.A straightforward way to think about it is to imagine how you would

operate as an old-style king an autocratic war-leader and sovereign (two

distinct roles, often combined). Some things you'd do for your own benefitwould have beneficial side-effects for the society as a whole: When you

build roads for your armies and harbors for your fleets, your merchants

and peasants can use them also. When you introduce a coinage system to

facilitate collection of your taxes, it also stimulates commerce. If you huntdown and execute not just your own personal enemies, but 'public

enemies' as well, you suppress feuding and prevent people from taking

vengeance into their own hands greatly strengthening your position, as

your subjects lose the habit of making war or fighting on their own behalf.In general. you would aim to keep peace amongst your subjects partly to

get them on your side and make them stronger against external threats toyour crown, and partly for your own convenience to keep them easier to

tax and govern.

At the same time, to raise and keep a cadre of support, some things

you'd do would inevitably favor one class or segment of your peopleagainst another, and might be harmful or very costly to your society as a

whole. Because you cannot be everywhere at once, you'd find that you can

only govern through local 'notables' landowners, priests, rich merchantsand other important people whom you would need to keep on your side,

against the 'unwashed masses' if necessary. To do this, you would need to

pay them generously, or allow them to pay themselves by collecting theirown revenues of course, with some considerable kickback to you. Yet

since these same notables would have interests that conflict with yours,

and might even have ambitions to replace you, you'd need to keep them intheir place. To do so you would at leastpose as a champion of the people

against their immediate, local oppressors. You might need to do more than

pose, occasionally.

Some things that you found yourself compelled to do, you'd try toorganize for your own convenience, and in a way that would redound to

your benefit. Since people come clamoring to you with their petitions and

grievances, you'd try to get them to do this in an orderly way, indesignated places and at regular times. As the volume of such cases grew,

you'd deputize assistants to hear them and render judgment in your stead,

leaving a right of appeal to keep it clear that you had the last word. Tokeep hard cases to a minimum, you'd seek to make your judgments as

predictable as possible. Thus you would issue 'laws' and try to follow your

own precedents. You'd advertise 'the king's justice' as a public service, and

charge for it accordingly. In short, you would organize a legal system.


28/38

To prevent people from killing you when they grew tired or annoyed

with your rule, you might try to invest your regime and person with a

superstitious aura of sanctity, or divinity even. In any case, you'd want tokeep the priests on your side, to help in keeping the peasants manageable,

and (in a time before radio and television) as a line of communication to

your subjects. Thus, you would find it worthwhile to subsidize religion,enlisting it into the service of your regime to the extent possible.

You would build public works of various kinds temples, lighthouses,

aqueducts and what not not just for their utility value, but as monumentsto your power, to demonstrate the wealth and ingenuity at your disposal.

As well, you'd put up monuments of no public utility at all, to remind

people of your military victories and all your other accomplishments.

Apart from all these building efforts, you would do quite a lot simplyfor day-to-day show. To impress everyone (not least, yourself) with your

magnificence and generosity, you'd keep a splendid court, dressing and

dining sumptuously and punishing anyone attempting (or even seeming to

attempt) to compete with you in this 'royal manner.' You would organizeparades, pageants, games and spectacles of various kinds. You'd take your

show on the road and tour the kingdom with it, forcing your 'localnotables' to show their loyalty by putting you up and footing the bill for

their hospitality. In addition to easily defensible fortresses and castles, you

would build palaces that advertised your power precisely by notbeing

defensible against serious attack by showing that your reign did notdepend on massive walls against its own subjects. You would build the

wall around the city, against external enemies not around yourself.

Without being foolish about it, you would try to live as easily andgraciously as possible among your people.

Still, everything you'd want to do would have its cost in time or

money or blood and these would have to be raised somehow frompeople who had their own uses for these commodities. Especially in

ancient times, most of your effort would go into collecting that vital

revenue and keeping potential rivals at bay. What Finer has called "thecoercion/extraction cycle,"16 the protection racket, in other words

would never be far from your mind.

This brief review shows the drift of any ruler's thinking. What

distinguishes a legitimate king from a mafia boss remains a matter ofscale, success, time and habit, adding up eventually to a difference in

kind.The core of the ruler's problem is to differentiate himself from other

tough dudes who would prefer to run their own protection rackets. Thusthe dudes usually find themselves in competition not just to be the

toughest (which goes without saying) but also the most acceptable and

'legitimate.' So it was in ancient times. So it still is today.

a suggestivist perspective

At this point, we must back up a step. Pursuant to this paper'ssuggestivist

16 See Samuel Finer's The History of Government from the Earliest Times , (1997) p.15


29/38

perspective, we need to look at the flow of suggestions in the whole

society, and at the relation of that flow to its government's commands.

This requires that we see the ruler, or the regime, not only as a source ofcoercive suggestions to its subjects, but also as a recipient of suggestions

from them. We need to think of the regime not only as an apex of power in

its society, but also as an institution evolved by the society itself, to act asa clearing house and organ of reconciliation for all the suggestions in

circulation especially those that circulate amongst its governing elites.

From that perspective, government will appear as a somewhat peculiartype of industry, not unlike a central nervous system, in some respects,

providing society with certain cognitive services, defining and formally

recognizing (not just producing) what are known as 'public goods.'

As the market too functions as a clearing house and conciliator ofcompeting suggestions, this perspective allows us to think of politics and

economics in the same breath as entwined with one another through the

suggestions that pass within and between their respective sectors. In fact,

it allows us to think of society as a single suggestion ecology with variousdimensions never neatly separable from one another.

suggestions of desire

Within this social ecology, suggestions of desire are fundamental. An

infant just cries to let the grownups know that it wants something. Around

age two or so, it begins to learn the skills of negotiation, finding that it canget more of what it wants by strategically obliging the grown-ups. This

lesson lasts a lifetime, and forms the basis for social living: We get along

in society, and get what we want from it by convincing others puttingconvincing suggestions to them that we are or can be helpful to them.

The money system and economic arrangements merely formalize and

codify such negotiated understandings: that we want things, and will do

work to get them. Political arrangements provide a similar framework forthe threats and bluffing games. The outcome is a kind of generalized

market of suggestions: a) that one wants something; and b) that one will

do something (forothers orto them) to get it. This suggestion market findsa kind of equilibrium through a generalized "Law of Supply and Demand,"

as people naturally try to get as much they can for as little risk and

unpleasantness as possible.In general, a suggestion of desire creates an expectation about one's

future behavior. The infant's cry would be an example, suggesting that the

kid will probably stop crying if you change its diaper or give it somethingto suck on. A merchant's advertisements are essentially suggestions of

future satisfaction if you give him money for his product. The crucial

point is that desires will propagate via suggestion, from one individual to

another, in the form of threats and promised rewards. These may beexplicit or only tacit, soundly backed or vapid, but are effective to the

extent they serve to motivate others, generating further desires, intentions

and expectations in their turn.Provided that these exchanges are completely voluntary, we are in the


30/38

realm of economics and the 'free' market. But in a monopoly or 'company

store' situation, they will not be authentically voluntary and we quickly

find that the 'economics' have a political component. We find too thatthreats motivate and propagate at least as powerfully as promises do,

though not quite in the same way. The loan shark's threat to break your

kneecaps, and the government's tacit threat to put you in jail for taxevasion are blatantly political transactions, but economic ones at the same

time. Ultimately, there must be a political component in every market: a

police force, a judiciary and a system of contract law to keep the marketorderly: to defend property 'rights,' to suppress (unauthorized) piracy and

theft, to ensure that promised goods are delivered, to make sure that

agreed prices are duly paid.

power and authority

In this same vein, we can use the notion of suggestion to draw an

important distinction betweenpowerand authority. Politicalpower, from

one perspective, is a capability to make suggestions that some otherperson(s), must weigh very strongly: to make an offer they cannot refuse.

Power in the abstract is just a loose way of speaking: When people refuse

to be bribed or intimidated, power disappears.Then authority, sometimes called 'soft power,'can be seen as closely

related, but not the same thing at all. We might define it as a prerogative of

influential suggestion. To have authority on a given matter is to be one thatothers look to for suggestive guidance about it one whose suggestions

take substantial weight from the position, status or reputation of the

individual who makes them.The reason why government usually becomes more than a pure

protection racket is that the individual(s) with power tend to seek authority

as well because naked power provokes resentment, making its

enforcement expensive and risky. When people grant the ruler's authority,they not only submit to his power, but look to him for definitive

suggestions on various matters. What should be the standard unit of

weight or length? Should we drive on the right side of the road or the left?How should radio frequencies be allotted amongst those who wish to use

them? In situations like these and there are very many of them it is far

less important what decision is taken, than that a decision be taken andfollowed by everyone so that everyone can rely on its being followed.

When subjects look to their government with confidence that its power-

backed 'suggestions' will be reasonably intelligent, impartial, andeffectively enforced, then the regime has bolstered its power with the

authority of custom and law, making it cheaper to defend and very much

more secure.

government as a suggestion mill

As a refinement to our usual conception of government as the designated,

'official' perceiv

society as suggestion

Documents